Ok, so I’ve backed up my data. Will you stop nagging me now?

NO!

You need to test it regularly. Because if you don’t, then it is as good as not having one in the first place!

Don’t understand? Let me walk you through a
little story:

You’re driving along the highway when suddenly, you hear an ominous sound coming from the rear of your car: thumpa-ta, thumpa-ta, thumpa-ta. What could it be? A bird? A barrel? An astronaut?! I’m kidding – it’s just a flat tire. Well, that’s not a problem because you remember placing a spare in your boot 3 years ago. “Let me just pull over.” But lo and behold, your emergency spare is flat too!

Familiar story?

Data
Backup is Not Enough!

Similarly, your company may already have a data backup plan set in place. But there is one thing that is often overlooked even by the best decision makers or leaders – regular testing.

If I am being honest, I must admit that it is so easy to skip the testing process because of how time-consuming it is to do so. However, this is a necessary action to take in order to ensure success if and when you actually do need to retrieve your backup.

The base line is this – Every Business needs a Business Continuity Plan!

If one of these or another situation renders your data unusable or unreachable, your business’s fate hangs on the reliability of your backup systems.

So what can you do?

Testing your Backup is the Way to Go

At this point in time, if you are frantically searching for ways to increase the reliability and success of your data recovery solution, let me just save you the trouble by telling you point-blank that testing is the only way to go.

Imagine this scenario: one of your employees accidentally typed the wrong code and now your whole company’s system has crashed. You try to run your disaster recovery solution only to realize it can’t run because your application is 3 versions behind the latest one!

So according to the wisdom amongst IT professionals around the world, the minimum testing cycle is once per quarter.

At eVantage Technology, we think there’s no harm in testing more often than this. I mean, its always better to be safe than sorry!

It may sound like a lot of work and effort to test your backup, especially if you are a large company spread out over multiple locations. However, this is not a good excuse to put off testing.

For example, if you have a large and spread out system, consider using a structured plan to test portions of your system one at a time.

Sometimes,
You just have to Outsource

We can talk all day about the importance of
testing your company’s backup solution, but the bottom line is that it will
only get done if your company’s leaders value testing and are intent on doing
it.